Melbourne in the 1850s had a small but ambitious scientific community. One particularly idiosyncratic member of that community was William Blandowski, a man often at odds with the scientific establishment. He found himself embroiled in controversy with his choice of names for newly described Murray River fish.

One of my favourite books in our children’s collection is a story written by explorer Matthew Flinders about his cat, Trim. This story languished for many years in the archives of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, until it was discovered and published in the literary magazine Overland in 1973.